Heretofore, aircraft have been designed and built to carry out one or a number of several specific missions. An example of a specific mission is electronic countermeasures, which encompasses a variety of different missions such as electronic jamming of electromagnetic signals, data gathering, or interception of communications, to name a few. Other missions for which specific aircraft have been designed or modified include surveillance, reconnaissance including photoreconnaissance, ferrying of equipment, airborne tanker, various roles as a fighter/interceptor and as a trainer. There are, of course, other missions often carried out by specific aircraft, the above being listed only by way of illustration.
Given the missions sought to be carried out, the typical approach is to design an entire aircraft or build modifications into the aircraft to enable it to carry out that specific mission. That is, a specific aircraft or a modified aircraft adapted for electronic countermeasures is not well suited to function as a reconnaissance aircraft or fighter/interceptor. Requiring a plurality of aircraft, each adapted to carry out a specific mission, is expensive both in acquisition and maintenance. It would be advantageous from a cost standpoint to provide one or more aircraft which can quickly and easily be modified so as to be capable of carrying out any one of the numerous missions, as set forth above, or other types of missions. If the foregoing approach is to be successful, it is important that the modification be accomplished quickly, for example while the aircraft is being refueled, and easily by personnel who may have only limited skill.
In U.S. Pat. No. 3,640,492, issued Feb. 1, 1972 to Starr, a modular aircraft structure is disclosed. However, the approach as suggested by Starr, of piecemeal replacement of separate, relatively small modules on an aircraft is not entirely satisactory in that modification of the aircraft would be time consuming. Changes in, for example, military conditions may mandate that the aircraft be modified as soon as possible to carry out a different mission. Requiring personnel to interchange up to twelve modules would be time consuming. To quickly modify the aircraft would require a number of personnel working simultaneously to effectuate that end.
Regarding the modular approach, it would be useful to provide a set of modules which are interchangeable between different, similarly designed aircraft. This would make a small contingent of aircraft versatile to carry out individually or simultaneously a wide variety of missions as determined by the avionics provided in the set of modules.